Things to share from my business journey

When poor spelling puts lives at risk.

This week a large chemical fire caused chaos in Canberra. In the middle of the night locals were woken by huge explosions and they could see flames rising from the nearby factory building. The problem wasn’t the fire; it was the toxic smoke that was billowing out into the sky.

A Sydney Morning Herald report says “The Emergency Services Authority said the highly toxic gas phosgene, a by-product of PCB, the substance being burned, could be present in the smoke plume. The gas, which, was used as a chemical weapon during World War I, has a low odour but can be lethal, with symptoms taking some time to become apparent.”

Because there was a real possibility of danger for people in surrounding areas, the authorities immediately sent out an emergency text message. This is the message we received at 3am that night.

While it was great that we were warned of the danger so promptly, the message lost its effectiveness due to the spelling mistakes. This is the reaction people had.

“Because of the spelling of insadent and resadent, I thought it was probably a hoax.”

“Dear ACT Emergency Services: if you don’t spell correctly, and send messages at 3:32AM, I am more likely to think you’re at Mooseheads than fighting industrial fires.”

How many people ignored the message entirely and put themselves at risk of inhaling those gases? It’s hard enough to wake up and make sense of anything at 3am without having to decipher it. When the message is really important it needs to get the point across instantly. Two simple spelling errors were enough to make people hesitate before taking action. Two simple spelling mistakes could have been the difference between being safe and being in danger.

I am impressed that the message was issued so quickly despite the demands on the fire authorities but I think they’d have a better response if they checked the text before sending it out.

Perhaps we can all learn something from this event. If you have a message that you really want to get across, take a second to check it before sending. A typo or spelling error could block that line of communication.

If you’re interested to see what I’m talking about, this is some footage of the fire. When you see the size of the explosions and the amount of toxic smoke billowing from the factory, you’ll understand why this message was so important.

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12 Responses

Seriously, someone’s head should roll over this! For starters, I’ve never seen incident or resident spelled that way but what boggles my mind more is that the person put in charge of administering the emergency text messages can’t spell! I think it’s totally understandable that anyone would think it’s a hoax!

Great article, Nerida, and a very timely and important point. I think any emergency message needs to be checked by someone else before being sent in the middle of the night to thousands of people. (Hopefully the second person can spell!)

Hard to say Gabby, how many didn’t notice. It is true that texting and perhaps social media are having an impact on the level of spelling ability these days. Interesting how it had an impact on the legitimacy in this instance.

Hi Nerida. Words well said. Being the daughter of a high school English teacher I have always been particular about my spelling and other grammatical issues.

I got the same message as a recorded message on my land line as well as the text and I wondered if the bad spelling was deliberate in order to make the computer voice pronounce the words correctly? Just a theory.

It has got to be said that the efforts of the fire brigade were admirable though. It was a difficult situation to manage and if bad spelling was their only flaw then they did really well.

[…] after all it just looked like on of those spam emails you often get, complete with poor spelling. Nerida Gill blogged about the problem. Luckily in this case, no one died from the spelling errors – but […]

[…] after all it just looked like on of those spam emails you often get, complete with poor spelling. Nerida Gill blogged about the problem. Luckily in this case, no one died from the spelling errors – but […]

[…] after all it just looked like on of those spam emails you often get, complete with poor spelling. Nerida Gill blogged about the problem. Luckily in this case, no one died from the spelling errors – but […]

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